Tang water recipe?

Hi,

I'm wondering what people are doing for water for their Tangs. I've been mixing it in 5 gallon buckets with Arlington tap, plus 1tsp baking soda, 1tsp instant ocean salt and 1Tbsp Epsom salt. I just have pool filter sand for my substrate, but also have a bag of crushed coral in my HOB.

What are you doing? Just baking soda? Using some commercial rift lake mix? Or just making them live in tap?

Just curious.

My fish seem quite happy, but I was wondering about adjusting what I'm doing at some point to see if I get different results with spawning, etc.

I'm in Arlington also. Water report just came out. Our pH is 7.7.
I have never used anything but straight dechlored tap water. My tangs bred like crazy for years like this and were healthy. Like they say: KISS. Easy, no problems, no worries, no fuss.

I live in Silver Spring, but follow the same receipt you wrote 1tbsp of Epsom salt, 1 tsp of marine salt and 1 tsp of baking soda. You only need to keep doing the same thing every time you change the water, some people have acclimated their fishes to tap water but for you to get the most out of them try to make them feel like in the lake.

I just do tapwater and Prime. I'm not a big believer in trying to tinker with your water's pH out of the tap, though everyone has differing opinions there.

-Rich

This is a question that will have a lot of answers. I have found with Tangs to keep the PH 8.2 plus and keep the water hard. I live in gaithersburg and every tank I have has tangs in it. Yes they will do ok in lower ph's and softer water but I have found you don't get the colors and activities as the ph and hardness drops with tangs. I use Seachem tang buffer and cichlid salts. I use 1 Tablespoon for 40 gallons of each. I pretreat my water and use brightwell Erase CLp as a dechlorinator (.5 teaspoons/ 40 gallon) I have featherfins,tropheus and lamps breeding in the tanks. I also use ph buffering substrates. You will get lots of different answers for this question. This is what works very well for me.

I keep my adults with baking soda and epsom salts at about 2 tsp per 20 gallons. I raise my fry and juvies in regular Maryland tap water (I'm on the Patuxent water treatment plant which is a little softer than the Potomac....but still moderately hard). I had some issues with jaw deformities in tang fry several years ago. Another club member told me about his experiences with the same thing and the culprit was too much salt when the fry are developing. I dropped the marine salt altogether, backed off the others a bit, and don't bother amending the water for the grow-outs. No jaw deformities since. I do occasionally forget to add the epsom and baking soda during waterchanges and nothing bad happens. I do notice that the fish color-up better when it's added. I also use the same recipe on all rift lake tanks, I don't worry about which tank they're from since I have several that are mixed lakes.

I also don't mix in a bucket. If it's available, I will put the salts in the dump filter or behind the matten filter and let them dissolve, but I have been known to dump them right in the tank (I know...it's not recommended). I've seen plenty of fish eat an epsom salt crystal and spit it right back out. I think the big concern would be that the salts dissolve and form a dense salty layer of water that sits along the bottom of the tank but if you've got enough filtration it will mix quickly, or if I'm in the process of refilling the tank, I use the refill water from the hose to dissolve it.

I also estimate how much water I remove and only add enough salts for the replacement water volume.

Essentially, I do what's easy and sustainable for me. I do what makes the fish look good (if looking good = happy fish). I try not to overthink it. We had a speaker a while back on Lake Victoria fish who pointed out that although there are some very high pH readings from that lake, there are also many water quality readings taken with pH and hardness identical to what we have here in the DC area. The lakes are variable to some degree and the fish are adaptable.

Thanks all for your secret family recipes. I think I'll back off a little bit on what I'm adding to see how they do - maybe double the water to 10 gallons for the same additives and see how everyone does.

Part of the reason I was keeping the water pretty hard and higher pH is because I have a pair of wild caught Eretmodus and I understand the pH is higher where they live because of the wave action on the limestone rocks.